In PC games I generally turn my nose up at any kind of assistance, even if I play through games on easy in an attempt to clear my Steam backlog. But here I feel so handicapped by having to use a controller rather than a mouse that I'm a lot more inclined to take help where it's offered.
I actually like the listen mode. It really does feel like I'm closing down my senses and concentrating on listening *really* hard. It also helps make up for the silly stuff, like not being able to collect more bullets. I wish they'd given us the option to dump a weapon and keep more ammo, which would have added more value to replays as well.... even though I'd have spent hours stood around trying to decide which weapon(s) to leave behind.
Still, I'm not going to complain. I love it just the way it is, warts and all.
Talking of warts, many people have mentioned the AI. It's possible that above Easy and Normal (the only settings I've run so far) these defects are more obvious. But even if that's not the case, when I've met issues they barely register on my radar. I mean, I barely know which direction I'm going in next, so how can Naughty Dog's code predict that in advance?
And the being ignored by enemies thing is just something we almost always have to live with in sneaky co-op games, otherwise we'd end up frustrated after ten minutes of play.
Back in the depths of 32-bit time I did a bit of co-op AI programming for a simple top-down shooter on the Acorn Archimedes (we never finished because I discovered Doom and got depressed.
) I can still remember the headaches I had then, and that was in a very, very simple situation. So I may be more forgiving than most.
At the end of the day, playing computer games always requires a certain suspension of disbelief, which is why it can be so hard to persuade non-gamers to take this hobby seriously. But Last of Us pulls me so far and deep into the moment that it'd take a lot more than a bit of daft AI code to freak me out. That's the Clickers' job!
